Elton Jantjies has been given time off to deal with his father’s death, and will miss the Stormers’ two warm-up matches.

The flags at the Stormers training ground in Bellville flew at half-mast on Monday as a sign of respect to Jantjies, whose father, Thomas, 46, a warrant officer in the army, died in 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria on Saturday after complications from a bee sting.

‘It’s really sad, a real tragedy for the Jantjies family and we want to support Elton in whatever way we can,’ Stormers coach Allister Coetzee said on Monday. ‘He has returned to Johannesburg and he must take as much time as he needs to deal with the tragedy. There will not be any pressure on him to return to action. He definitely won’t play in the two warm-up matches and we’ll take it from there.

‘We have Gary van Aswegen coming back into training after recovering from injury and we have also had Kurt Coleman training hard with us. Then there is Louis Schreuder, who although a scrumhalf looked quite good when tried at flyhalf last season, as well as Dewaldt Duvenage, another scrumhalf who can also play flyhalf.’

The Stormers, of course, also have stalwart Peter Grant available to them, but his arrival back in the Cape is dependent on when his Japanese club is knocked out of their competition, with Coetzee stating that it could be any time between 5 February and 25 February.